UK expats in California flocking to buy Cadbury’s products

British nationals in San Francisco are panic-buying boxfuls of Cadbury’s chocolate products amid fears that supplies will run out.

Briton David Kidd, owner of the city’s You Say Tomato import store, noted that there were empty boxes on the shelves as people were coming in and buying in bulk of late. He said that in the past week customers had been in and purchased whole boxes of both Dairy Milk and Flakes.

The reason for the mad rush to buy Cadbury’s products is down to a recent lawsuit brought by US confectionary company Hershey, which has all but prohibited the import UK-manufactured Cadbury’s products.

Hershey makes Cadbury’s products in the US but to a different recipe than what is used on the other side of the Atlantic. The confectionary giant is now claiming that UK-produced sweets like Yorkie, Kit Kat and Maltesers infringe the company’s American licences or confuse consumers with similar names and wrappings.

The lawsuits have led to two of the US’s biggest importers of Cadbury’s products agreeing to stop ordering British sweets. However, many British expats have been angered by the news, with an online petition gathering over 33,000 signatures.

Twenty-four-year-old Ed Thomas from Surrey said that since moving Stateside he had realised just how bad American chocolate was, but he had been lucky enough to find some shops that sold Cadbury’s products. However, he noted that he would now have to find a more discreet way of getting a hold of his favourite sweets.

Nataly Bean, 26, from North Yorkshire, described Cadbury’s as “smooth and milky” and Hershey’s as “dry, tasteless and grainy”. She claimed that chocolate was meant to be a treat, but eating a Hershey’s product was more of a punishment, adding that she would even pretend it was delicious in front of American friends just to be the polite Brit.